Culture Club - 13 Books You Should Read In 2026

00:00:00.000 the books on our current reading list our tbr piles and the new releases we're looking forward

00:00:10.020 to this year i'm maggie zhao and i'm jasmine wallace and you're listening to culture club

00:00:15.020 where true writers and editors chat about pop culture current affairs the internet and our lives

00:00:21.180 today we're recording on the lands of the Wurundjeri, Woiwurrung and Turbul people

00:00:33.940 we would like to pay our respects to elders past and present and extend this to any

00:00:38.660 Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander listeners today

00:00:41.400 that's right we are here with two episodes this week truly starting 2026 with a bang

00:00:51.760 and we got a little request um on our 2025 book recap episode for the books that are on our tbr

00:01:00.360 or to be read piles for 2026 and we do not pass up a chance to talk about books so we had to jump

00:01:06.900 on the mic thank you listener holly for this wreck and you know yes we love talking about books so we

00:01:12.220 were thinking why not turn it into its own mini extra episode i'm so excited for your list we

00:01:19.080 don't know what's on each other's list so we're going to start with the books that we're currently

00:01:24.920 reading at the moment in the first few weeks of jan then we'll go to our tbr piles followed by

00:01:31.340 the books that we're excited to read that we've heard about for 2026 and new releases we'll get

00:01:36.180 started with what we're currently reading so jazz and especially I would like to preface we're on

00:01:41.780 like summer holiday time so I think that's really reflective in the books we've picked at least for

00:01:46.320 myself like what I'm currently reading but what are you reading at the moment I am about three

00:01:51.420 quarters through the book happiness and love by Zoe Dubno it's a debut novel she's a New York

00:01:58.880 based or New York London based writer I discovered Zoe through the US summer discourse I don't know

00:02:05.320 if you saw it it was like a feature doing like the literary rounds on instagram ironically and

00:02:10.820 it was called who wants to be a literary it girl and it was a feature published in cultured mag

00:02:15.100 it had like a yellow and red like design to it that's cool i think i missed it but that sounds

00:02:21.560 good so i followed like a few writers who were featured in that um article and then i discovered

00:02:28.800 her interview in the wall street journal titled a debut novelist satirizes new york's creative class

00:02:34.640 so i was a bit intrigued i bought this from hill of content bookshop in melbourne their new store

00:02:39.900 on burke street it's one of my favorite bookstores in melbourne and i only just got to reading over

00:02:45.140 the summer holidays so it's essentially a character examination of new york's quote

00:02:50.820 insufferable art scene it's all from the point of view of one unnamed narrator we assume she's like

00:02:57.860 a young woman in her like late 20s essentially she is a new york writer and she's fled the city

00:03:06.620 after having to deal with all these pretentious people in her life in the art world she's moved

00:03:11.860 to london but then she's pulled back into new york after a failed actress mutual friend of

00:03:17.720 everyone's passes away and the whole book you know a few hundred pages is from her sitting on

00:03:24.280 the corner of this white sofa at this like memorial dinner party and it's really talented

00:03:30.400 the way that Zoe can be sitting like the character is sitting in one position but she's like going

00:03:37.360 back in time she's like telling like character backstories and giving like all this information

00:03:44.200 while it then like brings you back to the fact that she's sitting on this white sofa

00:03:48.540 oh my goodness so the dinner party is um at this artist curator couple um and it's the evening

00:03:55.520 after the funeral of their mutual friend it's a pretty scathing takedown of the art industry and

00:04:03.760 literature as well I think and media so it's very like cultural and critical observation

00:04:08.140 to be honest I am finding it a little pretentious at times yeah obviously it's American and just

00:04:15.860 kind of like the whole commercialization of art and social media kind of criticism some points

00:04:22.840 I'm like this is like quite pretentious but then it does have a good pace so you're able to like

00:04:29.320 get back into it because the character writing is so good yeah another interesting thing is that

00:04:34.580 there's no chapters and it's pretty much like running yeah so like when you're like when do

00:04:40.260 I stop reading like it's really it would be easy to like read it in a few hours in one sitting you

00:04:45.200 it would be like probably four or five but sometimes I'm reading it I'm like I can't stop

00:04:49.300 because there's like nowhere to stop it's just like it's in the point of view of this one character

00:04:53.620 at this party so I'm I am enjoying it I don't know if you'd love it personally it can be just

00:05:01.560 like quite pretentious I think but yeah it's an interesting one I feel like it's quite an

00:05:06.480 experimental read to start the year with so I'm glad that I've picked it up thank you for sharing

00:05:12.400 that one i hadn't heard of it i have a question is it similar to brie lee's the work no no i only

00:05:20.980 drew that conclusion because it's like oh yeah new york art scene and like air of pretentiousness

00:05:26.600 but um it's almost like rich nepo baby art scene um the patron frankenstein yeah kind of similar

00:05:36.320 to Cleopatra and Frankenstein, but all from one point of view and from one evening at this dinner

00:05:43.020 party. And I know it's early days, not finished, but if you had to give it a star rating so far.

00:05:48.340 So far, I'd say three. Nice. What are you currently reading at the moment? Would you

00:05:52.620 believe that up until like two days ago, I was reading four books at once, which I never do.

00:05:58.300 That's too many. I'm a proponent of that. That's something I'm actually trying to like avoid this

00:06:03.380 but I usually do that I think it's good I'm usually a two book girl and I'm like one's an

00:06:07.920 audiobook one's a physical book but this time it just ended up being like this but I have finished

00:06:13.940 one and I loved it so much but that's our book club book I will let the listeners know that was

00:06:19.320 Clara and the Sun um but I won't be talking about that one so I'm just gonna focus on the two main

00:06:23.840 books I'm reading at the moment I'm not gonna give you four synopsis and as I mentioned up top I'm

00:06:30.200 very much into that like summer reading light reading list so currently I'm reading Great Big

00:06:35.220 Beautiful Life by Emily Henry which is her newest release that came out last year 2025 and that is

00:06:41.620 in her usual style contemporary fiction. Now have you seen much about this one or do you know

00:06:47.660 much about this one? I haven't I remember when it came out but I've actually never read an Emily

00:06:52.720 Henry. That shocks me. Friend of the podcast Allie Daisy King has lent me a copy and it's been

00:06:57.660 in my house for I think a year and I still haven't picked it up I'm so sorry Ali but talk to me about

00:07:03.940 Great Big Beautiful Life. Read Emily Henry I find them just really fun like it's your typical I know

00:07:09.480 romance isn't your favorite but it is this rom-com drama chiclet category but I often do enjoy Emily's

00:07:18.320 writing this one's a bit different though I'll give you the premise so she loves to write about

00:07:22.960 writers so this one's no different it follows protagonist Alice Scott who is a very happy-go-lucky

00:07:28.680 positive gal she is a writer for a online publication and then the love interest for this

00:07:34.200 is Hayden Anderson who is a Pulitzer Prize winning author and essentially it's them vying to write the

00:07:42.000 memoir of this reclusive but glamorous uh woman whose family was part of like a media empire and

00:07:50.280 she was um had this beautiful love story with like a famous musician um i'm about halfway through

00:07:56.940 this book and it is very like the seven husbands of evelyn hugo which is written by taylor jenkins

00:08:03.160 reed so in this book emily henry really dives into that like historical fiction like genre

00:08:11.260 which she hasn't done before my eyes lit up over that yeah yeah you love that you love that it's

00:08:16.260 a lot of characters sometimes i'm like whoa so we're like living in the present and then

00:08:19.780 we're going back into the memories and then we're learning about her great great grandfather and

00:08:23.260 then we're learning about her dad and then we're learning about like a love chat like there's a lot

00:08:26.920 of characters i'm interested i think i probably prefer her normal just like contemporary stuff

00:08:32.360 but that's what i'm currently reading and oh funnily enough that was given to me for my

00:08:36.800 birthday by ali so second mention there i'm intrigued by this i love a media world and

00:08:42.340 also historical fiction so i really really will read emily henry in 2026 and you can borrow this

00:08:47.860 copy. Thank you. And then as a quick mention, the audio book that I'm going through now is called

00:08:53.400 Truly Madly Guilty by Leanne Moriarty. I read a lot of Leanne Moriarty, especially as an audio

00:08:59.600 book, Australian author. She has obviously done like Nine Perfect Strangers and Apples Never

00:09:05.040 Fall. God, I hate that name. It always confuses me. And this is her 2016 contemporary fiction

00:09:10.960 book. Essentially, it follows three couples and the premise of the book is like, oh, it's like

00:09:17.040 normal everything's normal and then they have like a random afternoon barbecue and something

00:09:22.080 goes wrong and it's just about what how everyone reacts essentially it is so long I am shocked at

00:09:28.960 how long this book is and it could have been cut down by 200 pages I swear to god so it's okay it's

00:09:34.820 fine I'm enjoying I'm almost finished but it's kind of one that I'm just putting on I'm enjoying

00:09:40.080 the characters but the narrative like the narrative is okay can I ask side note when do you listen to

00:09:45.680 audiobooks the most like what are you doing when you're listening to an audiobook great question

00:09:49.360 my favorite would be when I'm cooking because I feel like I like to focus on a task but sometimes

00:09:54.260 like if I'm going for a walk with an audiobook I can tend to get distracted yeah sometimes I'm

00:09:58.220 just putting it on around the house almost like when you listen to a podcast that's what I find

00:10:02.340 with audiobooks though because like if you miss one sentence you need to go back sometimes

00:10:06.780 distracted by them I listened to the last book club book while driving I thought that was

00:10:12.780 a good way to listen to an audiobook. Sometimes I was like, is this too distracting?

00:10:27.700 Okay, let's now go to what's on our TBR piles. So not the new releases that are coming this year,

00:10:35.040 but just books that we're interested in. What is on your list?

00:10:39.720 first up i have blue august by deborah levy which is from 2023 she's one of my favorite writers

00:10:47.720 she's a south african british writer i love all of her non-fiction autobiographies which i really

00:10:51.900 recommend they are called the cost of living real estate and things i don't want to know and i've

00:10:56.700 also read her fiction novel the man who saw everything which was long listed for the book

00:11:00.320 a prize and i really enjoyed that it's been out for a few years i remember when it came out and

00:11:04.720 i wanted to buy it but the hardback was like 45 and i was like oh i'll just wait wait wait so i

00:11:10.620 got the paperback recently for christmas actually from laurie so the synopsis follows a concert

00:11:16.140 pianist elsa m anderson she's a former child prodigy and is now in her 30s and she walks

00:11:21.740 off the stage in vienna mid-performance now she's in athens watching as an uncannily familiar young

00:11:27.280 woman purchases the last pair of mechanical dancing horses at a flea market elsa soon begins

00:11:32.240 a journey across europe on the run from her talent and her history shattered by the elusive

00:11:36.460 woman with the dancing horses it's described as a dazzling portrait of melancholy and metamorphosis

00:11:42.000 and uncovers the ways in which we seek to lose an old story find ourselves in others and create

00:11:48.080 ourselves anew oh this sounds interesting it sounds good i just love the way deborah writes

00:11:54.240 just normal everyday life and she's just so poetic and meaningful about like day-to-day things so

00:12:01.980 i'm curious about this what's your favorite deborah book or like what would you recommend

00:12:07.040 to someone who hasn't read her work before like myself well i think all the non-fiction

00:12:11.020 autobiographies are at the top the cost of living is my favorite i think it's been a couple years

00:12:17.440 since i've read them all they're really easy to read um and they're all like little paperbacks

00:12:21.280 you've probably seen the round they're like in the primary colors like blue yellow red

00:12:24.460 real estate is great especially during like a cost of living or like a housing crisis

00:12:29.000 because it's essentially like deborah talking about yeah how she wants like a house of her own

00:12:35.100 and building things after divorce and the importance of like women having a place that's

00:12:42.320 theirs so i really enjoyed that as well so you know you've not read any deborah i know i can't

00:12:46.600 believe i haven't she's such a like a hot author you know but i will but i will what's on your tbr

00:12:54.800 first. Oh, I'm so excited to talk about these. It's nice to get excited about TBRs instead of

00:12:59.380 feeling daunted, which is often the case because they're a long list. My first book I'm talking

00:13:03.820 about is called Root Rot by Saskia Nisloe. And this was actually the book I got at our book club's

00:13:10.620 book swap. So we do like a blind book swap. And this was a hot book. Like people kept trying to 0.89

00:13:15.780 steal. I mean, I stole it. Like at the end, this is Bad Santa. And this is a horror fiction novella

00:13:21.760 that was published in 2025. I was so drawn to it because it's got such a cool beautiful cover. It's

00:13:28.880 quite artsy. The colors stand out a lot too and also as I mentioned it's a novella. It's very short

00:13:35.080 which is intriguing to me especially as someone who doesn't read horror much at all. The premise

00:13:40.800 is that nine children travel with their families to their grandfather's vacation property where

00:13:46.300 strange things happen things like eyes start to blink from the bottom up mushrooms ooze blood

00:13:52.960 people's faces don't hang right and these transformations warp the children's sense of

00:13:58.020 time and place and the very land itself seems to encroach upon them and then again haven't read

00:14:04.360 this book so I am reading from the blurb this character or this persona or something called

00:14:09.880 the liar capital t capital l watches the children succumb one by one to an unknown fate and then

00:14:17.820 we'll go from there so as you can see there's elements of fantasy um it's definitely got horror

00:14:24.000 it's a horror book uh i like how weird and wacky it is and my friend who has read it has said that

00:14:30.420 she was like i need someone to read this so we can talk about it which that's a great kind of

00:14:35.140 ending for a book I'm so intrigued by this I do think horror fiction is real hot right now

00:14:42.220 I'm seeing a lot of it out there so I think I might dip my toe in as well I think I said at

00:14:46.900 the end of the 2025 like I more thrillers but some horror fiction too I'm like a scaredy cat

00:14:52.160 but I don't like horror movies so maybe a book is like once removed so I can still explore those

00:14:56.640 things I agree I will say so you gave me the vegetarian book a couple years ago and you were

00:15:03.680 like oh what a pretty book like what a pretty short book and i was reading it and then i was

00:15:08.640 thoroughly disturbed um and i was so thrown i was like oh my goodness i did not expect this

00:15:15.200 but i will say jazz i was going to message you about this two of my friends have now borrowed

00:15:18.780 it and loved it and like they read it quick so that was great to see and you can borrow if you

00:15:23.580 like i feel like am i a good bookseller like the thing you gave me i bought you which is one of

00:15:29.600 your favorite books of the year and the vegetarian which i'd never read i just thought maggie will

00:15:33.540 like this maybe i just know you so well i mean i don't actually in a great way i don't know if i

00:15:37.700 like the vegetarian i'm glad i read it but it was like i wouldn't say that all righty what else is

00:15:44.840 on your tbr list okay next up is one story by pip thinkmeyer she is an australian author based in

00:15:53.240 melbourne i attended her book launch in october last year it was great but then i got married

00:15:59.760 like two weeks later i remember talking to her at the launch being like she's like are you getting

00:16:03.660 married soon i was like i know i'm so stressed so i've been carrying this around with me for so long

00:16:09.440 and just haven't had a chance to sit down and open it up but it is the second novel from pip

00:16:15.880 her debut novel in 2023 sad girl novel i loved i recommend it on the podcast at the time it was

00:16:21.860 one of my favorite reads of 2023 so this story goes into the tech world like silicon valley

00:16:28.100 vibes so it's set in 2010 silicon valley where dot van jensen is a trailblazing ceo turned

00:16:36.660 fugitive and she's narrating her story from a hidden corner of indonesia essentially a scandal

00:16:42.020 has painted her as the villain a puppet master who fractured democracy and paved the way for a

00:16:46.920 darker future but is the truth as cut and dry as the headlines seem to imply one story is an app

00:16:52.760 and it kind of goes through the story of how it came to be it also follows her co-founders one of

00:16:59.520 whom is her son john and another is ray and documentary crew is digging for the truth and

00:17:06.280 dot may be taking the fall it's a look at ambition betrayal and the power of narrative in a world

00:17:12.480 hungry for answers it sounds quite like a big idea i think so i'm really curious to read a book by an

00:17:21.120 author who's based in Melbourne but it's about Silicon Valley tech and like 2010s and things

00:17:25.200 that we remember so clearly but now we're like seeing the consequences of in the 2020s. So I

00:17:30.640 actually read this book earlier this year when I was traveling in Europe so I can also attest to

00:17:37.140 this book I will say two things very cool Pip has actually worked for tech companies here in

00:17:42.740 Australia and internationally so she's got that backing there and I will say this is a good and

00:17:48.040 bad things so i read this at the same time i read tomorrow tomorrow and tomorrow by gabriella

00:17:54.000 seven and it was quite similar and i say it's a good thing because people love that book so perhaps

00:18:01.240 if you do like tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow you you might like this but i kept it was it was

00:18:06.280 it's like two if i can break down these two stories very simplistically it's like

00:18:10.080 building an app like how like how these different co-founders have built an app obviously that's

00:18:15.060 a way of a simplification but i got kind of confused so i would not recommend that but

00:18:19.780 um yeah this is a fun read it's not as heavy i know i know what you mean like there's a lot of

00:18:25.020 big themes but it's quite like a fun read yeah i love pip's writing and her take on like modern

00:18:31.180 culture so i'm really excited for this what's next on your tbr what's next on my tbr this is

00:18:38.180 a book called ghost cities by siang lu and this is an australian book it's part fable part rom-com

00:18:44.260 part fantasy and it was published back in 2024 i heard about this because i saw the articles came

00:18:51.780 out because this won the 2025 miles franklin award and what i found most fascinating and so

00:18:58.120 motivating but scary was that guess what this book sat unpublished for 10 years it was rejected

00:19:06.560 more than 200 times both in australia and overseas what yeah i know that's crazy it's wild and the

00:19:16.560 short way of the story goes that yes that happened and then he ended up winning like a short story

00:19:22.300 competition for another story and then that helped get his name up and then that's why this was

00:19:26.720 published that's crazy so it like got rejected 200 times but then it won the 2025 miles franklin

00:19:32.980 war tell me about it that's crazy like it shows that you shouldn't give up on something that you

00:19:38.120 really believe in because you never know the right time for it exactly in terms of the premise for

00:19:44.040 this book i when i was reading the blurb i think it kind of sounds like everything everywhere all

00:19:49.600 at once in the sense of like lots of mini parallel worlds a lot of wackiness so i'm just going to

00:19:56.020 read you the blurb now. So it's inspired by the vacant uninhabited megacities of China and the

00:20:03.560 book follows multiple narratives including one in which a young man named Xiang is fired from his

00:20:09.480 job as a translator at Sydney's Chinese consulate. After it is discovered he doesn't speak a word of

00:20:15.720 Chinese and he's been relying on Google Translate which I love. I'll continue reading from the

00:20:21.380 synopsis how is his relocation to one such ghost city connected to a parallel odyssey in which an

00:20:27.440 ancient emperor creates a thousand doubles of himself or where a horny mountain gains sentience

00:20:33.360 where a chess-playing automaton hides a deadly secret or a tale in which every book in the known

00:20:38.680 empire is destroyed then recreated page by page and book by book all in the name of love and art

00:20:45.680 so this is something that i have not read before i think this genre of like sci-fi fantasy that

00:20:50.640 feels very vast and like quite deep I'm a little bit nervous to read because I'm like I wonder if

00:20:57.260 I'll have the stamina or like the background to keep up but I'm intrigued I think especially

00:21:01.820 it's just about this author's rise um has really gripped me so I'm I'm really excited to try this

00:21:07.780 one yeah it sounds so interesting definitely added to my never-ending list as well I know

00:21:13.680 we've got so many good books to read it kind of always freaks me out I always get existential about

00:21:18.440 it same we're now going to move on to the books we're most excited about that are being released

00:21:33.420 in 2026 jazz kick us off i received a lovely email the other day from simon and schuster the

00:21:42.660 publicity team there and they gave me like a whole powerpoint with like releases from jan

00:21:47.920 Feb and March and I was like this is amazing all different genres so the ones a lot caught my eye

00:21:54.140 I think I wrote down like six different titles but the ones I will share today first up is Cape

00:22:00.000 Fever by Nadia Davis which is out this month in January it's by the award-winning South African

00:22:06.580 author and comes an exhilarating tale of twisted desire and the unexpected shape of revenge in a

00:22:14.020 gothic psychological thriller set in the 1920s it's being recommended to people who loved the

00:22:20.560 safe keep by yale van der woorden who was actually speaking at melbourne writers festival last year

00:22:26.360 and the safe keep was a huge novel of 2025 it was everywhere won a few awards as well so if you're

00:22:32.620 into that psychological thriller um but also family drama i guess maybe this is a good read

00:22:38.740 i'm excited to read it oh cool you got me excited i actually saw this floated in my

00:22:42.860 inbox but then I was like I was kind of it's so bad sometimes I'm just put off by like oh like

00:22:48.780 it's 1920 South Africa oh my god that's so bad but I it's good to explore time periods that you're

00:22:56.100 not familiar with and like places you're not familiar with so if you read it I'm keen to hear

00:23:00.740 your review what's on your 2026 list first up yeah first up it's this book called The Ten Year Affair

00:23:07.280 by Erin Summers I actually saw this on Cameron aka Slaggy Book Club's Instagram the other day

00:23:13.720 the cover caught my attention so I like jotted down its name and this is like a fun this feels

00:23:19.200 like a fun one it's kind of you know one sentence summary it would be like about infidelity in

00:23:25.440 midlife and the premise follows two married people who meet at a baby group in town and

00:23:34.520 instantly like their chemistry is palpable and they hit it off but the two of them aren't like

00:23:39.380 the type to cheat so what kind of happens is a book I think starts to follow um the woman's like

00:23:44.800 fantasy of what would happen versus the reality of like how they're resisting and I think that

00:23:51.320 tension between the fantasy versus what's actually happening in reality is um a big focus of the book

00:23:58.560 I don't know where this goes I don't know if they like it if it enters any I guess more sci-fi realm

00:24:05.420 where like things start to cross over but yeah I'm intrigued I'm intrigued by this one it's got a hot

00:24:12.140 cover and I think it'll be like a nice like summer read yeah the cover is beautiful it's like two

00:24:18.780 people kind of touching hands but one person's wearing a bright red jumper so it's quite eye

00:24:23.060 catching intrigued intrigued what is next on your list next i have a brisbane writer which is very

00:24:30.640 exciting it's called how to kill a guy in 10 days by shaley thompson it's a debut and it's out in

00:24:37.220 february the synopsis i received is that it's a hilarious swoony and downright terrifying horror

00:24:43.760 romance in which a cinephile gets caught in the middle of a murder spree at a speed dating event

00:24:48.940 and last used her encyclopedic knowledge of the rom-com and horror genres to make it as a real

00:24:54.740 life final girl oh my god that's so funny it sounds good it sounds just like a fun read yeah

00:25:00.640 despite the murder and the horror but it really caught my attention and the cover art it's kind

00:25:06.600 of that like 1950s almost graphic novel style vintage style sorry i'm not a graphic designer

00:25:14.400 almost like comics comic book style like there's little vignettes yeah that's what yeah and it's

00:25:20.420 like pink as well and I just love rom-com final girl kind of analysis as well I think is really

00:25:27.180 interesting at uni I studied like I did a class on like film stuff and I really found that

00:25:33.380 intriguing so what's final girl I don't know final girl is like the concept of who is like

00:25:40.040 the final girl left to survive or like the last one to die in our horror movie oh my god this

00:25:45.760 sounds so fun i feel like this book seems like it would have been a joy to write like i feel like

00:25:51.480 it would have been such a fun experience and great to see that it's a debut brizzy author

00:25:56.480 yeah love australian authors so cool that's that's genuinely brought such a smile to my face

00:26:02.540 what is next on your 2026 list the next book I've got is called Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash

00:26:10.680 and I've been starting to see this book come around quite a bit I will say at the start I

00:26:18.580 did not like the cover it's like a dark green book and then it's got a close-up of like a

00:26:23.160 porcelain like lamb fig or yeah lamb figurine it looks very Sally Hepworth who does a lot of like

00:26:30.700 thriller mystery novel she's an australian author and i don't know that kind of put me off because

00:26:35.680 i was like oh is it that genre but i'm not sure if it is i'll give you the synopsis this was on

00:26:41.200 penguin's site so it follows the three chaotic flynn sisters as their spiraling personal disasters

00:26:47.860 pull them into their youngest sister's harper's dangerous quest to expose a corrupt local

00:26:54.020 billionaire who may be controlling their town oh sisters billionaire corruption oh like i'm

00:26:59.880 intrigued by that this book will actually be released by the time that this episode is out

00:27:04.620 um but yeah I think this is an interesting premise to me I like the setting I like again

00:27:10.680 that it's about sisters family dynamics and corruption so yeah I'd be I'd be keen to read

00:27:17.100 this one is the author American yeah she's from LA oh Lena Dunham described her as a voice like

00:27:24.340 no other. Oh, imagine Lena Dunham ascribing you. That'd be amazing. And you've got one more left

00:27:33.140 on your 2026 new release watch list. What is it? I am a huge Fleabag fan. I watched it when it came

00:27:40.960 out and I was like Phoebe Waller-Bridge is such an amazing writer. So inspiring. And this book

00:27:46.180 was described as Fleabag meets Big Swiss. And I was like, sign me the fuck up. Tom's mum the other 0.94

00:27:51.940 day um slip of the tongue do you know what she said she was like oh yeah flea bee wallabridge

00:27:57.360 which is my favorite i was like why are we not saying that flea bee that's actually so cute

00:28:04.400 though yeah okay well tell me about this book well it's called just watch me and it's by

00:28:09.380 leor torenberg who is a u.s writer i've got this this just came it's a really gorgeous cover i've

00:28:15.840 just got i just arrived in my mail okay tell me about it it's out this month so it's probably why

00:28:21.260 you received a copy and it's described as a visceral darkly hilarious and surprisingly moving

00:28:27.220 debut about a charismatic misfit who live streams herself for seven days straight to raise money

00:28:33.060 for her comatose sister's life support grim dark but described as fleabag meets big swiss

00:28:39.900 definitely pulled me in and also the cover is really pretty it's very pretty so i i'm keen to

00:28:45.980 read that yeah no i'm okay i'm adding that i'm popping that higher on the tbr thank you for the

00:28:52.200 reminder but yeah gorgeous cover it's also not too long which i don't know that's good it's good

00:28:57.960 when our tbr piles are this long true i don't know about you but i'm feeling super inspired to go read

00:29:02.700 now like i just want to log off and sit on the sofa go read no i know this is good i'm getting

00:29:08.060 giddy but i've got one more book to share with you jazz which is your final 2026 read my final book

00:29:13.960 this was sent to me via bloomsbury and it is called vigil by george saunders who is an award

00:29:19.820 winning author the one liner for this one i found very intriguing so it takes place at the bedside

00:29:25.540 of an oil company ceo in the twilight hours of his life as he is ferried from this world

00:29:31.820 onto the next so it's about the afterlife it's about you know grappling with your legacy and

00:29:38.040 what you've done um i'm purposely like not wanting to know too much before i read it to be honest

00:29:43.600 Like I like the intrigue and I don't want to spoil it for myself,

00:29:48.540 but I've got this one sitting with me at the moment and I am keen to read it.

00:29:53.100 Who was the publisher, sorry?

00:29:54.580 Bloomsbury.

00:29:55.300 Yeah.

00:29:55.820 Oh, I'm super intrigued.

00:29:57.180 It sounds almost like succession style with like legacy CEO vibes.

00:30:04.980 Yeah.

00:30:05.320 And to be honest, it's not necessarily a book I would have typically picked up,

00:30:08.880 but I'm really always trying to branch out my reading habits.

00:30:12.120 and i feel like we've got such a thorough reading list from this episode i can't wait we're gonna

00:30:17.920 obviously put this all down in our show notes but we'll also pop something up on instagram too

00:30:22.200 uh this is so exciting god it's good to be excited about books yeah well happy reading in

00:30:29.740 2026 everyone we will still continue book chat on the pod be sure to listen to the end of our

00:30:36.400 episode our pop culture episodes where we recommend the books that we've been reading

00:30:40.060 recently that segment is called bookmarked and we'll always link them in the show notes

00:30:44.680 drop a comment below if you're listening on spotify with the books that you're excited about

00:30:49.380 or what you're reading at the moment as well or send us a message on instagram we're always

00:30:53.240 wanting to hear so thank you so much again for joining us on this special edition

00:30:57.580 special extra episode of culture club bye

00:31:10.060 You

Culture Club - January 15, 2026

13 Books You Should Read In 2026

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